Not that clever with computers but have programmes and loads of photos on the

lap-top that I'd like to back-up ( over 5gb of photos ) what would people on here

recommend as (easy to use) a solution, would an external hard drive be the answer

and are they easy to use?

Thanks.

edit : looking at this, any opinions or advice welcome

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/703242

Edited 2 August, 200916 yr by leeland

I bought one of these at Costco,It now has all my photo's on and back up of all my music files.Nice small bit of kit at what I thought was a good price.

Cheapest option would be to burn them onto a DVD. 4.7GB for around 14p.

Easier long term option might be external USB drive.

Whatever you do ,dont put any important files solely on a DVD-R as its intented for short term storage only. I made this mistake, and a DVD-R which was burnt 18 months ago is now totally unreadable as the dye used has degraded over time rendering the disk useless.

I now have a backup system that relies on at least 2 copies of my data (110GB Music, 100GB pictures, 40GB other files). I keep a duplicate of all my documents on my laptop, and also another copy of all the data on an external USB powered HD. The laptop tends to go everywhere with me, and the HD I keep at work. So, I know if something happens to my data, then I have a reasonable chance to get it back.

Edited 7 August, 200916 yr by mannyo

If you only need a small amount of data backed up i.e 10-20 GBs (this is quite a small amount of data now) i personally wouldnt touch blank DVDs as they either scrach or as mannyo says they dont last long. I would go for an external Hard drive like the one in the link but wouldnt buy one from PC World (very overpriced)

I would reccomend amazon or aria.co.uk, first off you need to think about how much data you are likely to need backed up. Exernal drives are very easy to use, plug it in to a USB slot and then drag and drop the files you want backed up. They are also fairly inexpensive as well for example:

Western Digital My Passport Essential 250GB USB: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

This Hard drive is 250GB which may be pointless for you and therefore i would also think about USB memory sticks such as:

ByteStor 16GB USB High Speed "Dataferry" Flash Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Hope this helps!

You get archive grade DVDs Verbatim | Optical

But you might be better with external storage. If it's important you'll need to store in at least 2 places. i.e. you've got all your precious images on a nice 1Tb external drive and your mate knocks it off the desk into a bucket of water.

Stick them on the external drive and every couple of months back up onto cheap dvds, bin the old back up.

This Hard drive is 250GB which may be pointless for you and therefore i would also think about USB memory sticks such as:

ByteStor 16GB USB High Speed "Dataferry" Flash Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

Hope this helps!

I'll probably go for that to be honest, didn't realise memory sticks were that capacious and over

four years or so I've only got about 5gb of photos I want backed up,

Thanks for all the replies:)

I keep meaning to look into NAS, but keep getting scared off by horror stories of losing everything.

If its for pictures i would definitely recommend checking out an online service like flickr premium. My pics have made it through many hard drive deaths , reformats etc because the have been up "there".

you should be able to get a plugin for firefox that will let you use your account like a network drive

DVD R - cheap to make, but shelf life can vary. If you go down this route buy name brand Japanese ones, not ASDA's finest.

USB thumb drive - 16GB - Cheap to buy now. Should be around the 20 quid or so mark. Again name brand is the way to go Sandisk, Kingston et al. They provide guarantees if they go wrong (which is always too late though). However they are fairly stable and can be left for years.I still hve some 16mb ones from the late 90's with documents stored on them

External USB drive - Prices have come down a lot. You can go for a 2.5 in pocket drive style, no external power source needed. 320GB is quite economical with one of these. Or a powered3.5in drive and get 1.5TB for under 100quid.

You can pick and choose your cases and drives or buy an all in one unit.

NAS external drives - handy if you have more than one computer, pointless if you don't, but files can be lost due to sloppy transferring by the owner. Always best to do the large storage across the USB once you have everything across setup the NAS and do the incremental backup on that

Remember that the lower priced NAS will be 100mbit which is 4 times slower than USB2.0 and the Gigabit NAS will be considerable more expensive

Online - several companies offer online storage. Viable, sort of, in the UK, but slow upload speeds means it's going to take a while.

Best backup solution - a combination of the above. I personally would go with a 3.5 drive USB. 99 quid and an online storage option as well.

If you have Firewire, this external drive is a good price.

750GB & comes with USB2, Firewire & Firewire 800. About £78 delivered.

I've just got one & so far it's great. (You can get silver or black as well as white if the colour is important to you )

Tesco are doing a 320Gb IOMEGA USB powered external drive for £49. They're also doing the same make 250Gb drive for £55 :confused:

Don't go for too large a flash device as some of the multi level chips are not as permanant as some might like to have you believe.

Either that or copy it off the device, do an erase cycle and then write the data again every so often to be sure.